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Original Message
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HEBREW AND GREEK WORDS MISTRANSLATED TO MEAN HELL
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Mistranslations of Sheol, Hades, Tartarus and Gehenna
In Chapter 15, we showed that the concept of ‘eternal punishment in hell' is an unbiblical pagan doctrine embraced and christianised by the Roman Catholic Church in the early centuries of Christianity, and made official when Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in 400 A.D.
Jerome mistranslated and misinterpreted several key Hebrew and Greek words into the Latin Vulgate in support of the already established doctrine of hell of the Roman Catholic Church. The Latin Vulgate, as translated by Jerome, had such an overpowering dominance for over a thousand years that many subsequent Bible versions, especially the King James Version (KJV), have simply carried forward the translation and interpretation errors to varying degrees in support of the doctrine of hell.
The doctrine of everlasting punishment in hell is founded upon a combination of mistranslations and misinterpretations of the following Hebrew and Greek words.
• Mistranslations of the Hebrew word sheol and the Greek words hades, tartarus and gehenna to mean hell.
• Mistranslations of the time-related Hebrew word owlam and the time-related Greek words aion and aionios to mean everlasting when relating to God’s future punishment of unbelievers.
In the next chapter, we shall deal with the mistranslations of owlam, aion and aionios. In this chapter, we deal with sheol, hades, tartarus and gehenna, which have been mistranslated to mean hell.
Hell is such an infinitely extreme and dreadfully fearful doctrine with respect to the fate of unbelievers, who are the vast majority of humanity, that surely God would have inspired clear, unambiguous statements about it in the Bible. Also, one would expect Bible translators, experts in the Hebrew and Greek languages, to be in complete agreement on how many times the word ‘hell’ occurs in the Bible. But the shocking fact is that the opposite is true.
When we examine how often the word ‘hell’ occurs in various versions of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate onwards, we are shocked to see how widely Bible translators differ in their opinion and understanding of the word ‘hell’, as demonstrated by the table below.
Number of times the word ‘Hell’ occurs in the following Bible Versions
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Please study this comparison table and note the following shocking facts.
You will note that the Latin Vulgate mentions hell 101 times, which is the highest number of times the word hell occurs when compared to all of the other Bible versions. Actually, the number of times hell occurs in the Latin Vulgate is even greater than 101 times, but for comparison purposes with the Protestant Bibles, we have not included the number of times hell occurs in the additional books of the Apocrypha contained in the Latin Vulgate.
All of the popular Protestant Bible versions like the King James Version (KJV), the American Standard Version (ASV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the New International Version (NIV) and the New King James Version (NKJV) do not agree with the Latin Vulgate nor between themselves as to the number of times the word hell appears in the Bible.
Only in the Latin Vulgate, the KJV and the NKJV does the word hell appear in the Old Testament of the Bible, but even these versions have wide disagreements on the number of times hell occurs in the Old Testament. The Latin Vulgate mentions hell 77 times, whereas the KJV mentions hell 31 times and the NKJV mentions hell only 19 times.
All versions of the Bible except for these three, the Latin Vulgate, the KJV and the NKJV, reject any notion of hell occurring in the original Hebrew Manuscripts of the Old Testament. Also, please especially note from the comparison table above that the translators of the Jewish Publication Society Bible and the Tanakh/The Complete Jewish Bible disagree with the Latin Vulgate, the KJV and the NKJV by making no mention of hell whatsoever in their Bibles. If the Jews, who are experts in their own language Hebrew, do not include hell in their Bibles, then this confirms that the word hell is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word sheol.
There are also several Bible versions that reject any notion of hell occurring in the original Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament of the Bible. Among others, these versions include Young’s Literal Translation and Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible.
These are amazing and shocking facts that should make any Christian stop in his tracks, and start seriously questioning the validity of the doctrine of hell. Surely, the just and loving God of the Bible, who desires and wills all men to be saved, would have inspired clear, unambiguous statements in the Word of God about such an extreme doctrine as hell. This is absolutely not the case at all, as we have demonstrated.
The truth of the matter is that there is not one single word in the original Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts of the Bible that means hell. As discussed in the previous chapter, Hell is a man-invented, pagan, unchristian, heretical belief that was first embraced and christianised by Roman Catholicism and incorporated into the Bible through the Latin Vulgate in the early history of Christianity. The Latin Vulgate reigned supreme for over a thousand years and the doctrine of hell became deeply entrenched into the psyche of the Christian world as if it were a true biblical doctrine. The King James Version (KJV) followed the Latin Vulgate in most of its translation errors and also mistranslated sheol, hades, tartarus and gehenna to mean hell.
The King James Version (KJV) published in 1611 was the only standard version of the Bible for English speaking Protestant Christians for nearly 350 years until the general acceptance of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) published in 1952. Therefore, the KJV has had a major influence on formulating the traditional Christian view of the doctrine of hell in Protestant Christianity.
In the original Hebrew Manuscripts, the Hebrew word sheol occurs 65 times in the Old Testament, and it means the grave (the place of the dead) or the pit, as correctly translated by the KJV in 34 out of the 65 times it occurs in the Old Testament. However, shockingly and without any justification whatsoever, the KJV translates sheol 31 out of the 65 times to mean hell. As we have seen from the comparison table, all translators of the Bible versions except those who translated the Latin Vulgate, the KJV and the NKJV reject the interpretation of the Hebrew word sheol to mean hell.
The Greek word hades occurs 11 times in the original Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament and it is the direct equivalent of the Hebrew word sheol, thus it also means the grave (the place of the dead) or the pit. Once again, the KJV translators have carried forward the errors of the Latin Vulgate by translating hades 10 times to mean hell, and only one time to mean the correct translation of the grave.
The Greek word tartarus occurs only once in the original manuscripts of the New Testament and it means a prison of spiritual darkness, which all fallen angels are confined to until their final judgement in the Lake of Fire, as explained in Chapter 13. Tartarus does not mean a place of eternal torment in hell for fallen angels. Translators of the KJV and some other versions of the Bible have erred once again by copying the mistakes of the Latin Vulgate in mistranslating tartarus to mean hell.
The Greek word gehenna occurs 12 times in the original manuscripts of the New Testament, and for each and every time gehenna occurs, it has been mistranslated to mean hell by the KJV translators, who yet again followed the errors made by Jerome in the Latin Vulgate. In addition, all of the popular versions of the English Bible like the NKJV and the NIV also fell into the same trap of mistranslating gehenna to mean hell. However, Young’s Literal Translation version and several other versions of the Bible have left gehenna untranslated as it appears in the original Greek manuscripts.
Let us be absolutely clear that Jesus Christ did not speak about hell. Jesus Christ spoke about gehenna, not hell. Bible translators have mistranslated and misinterpreted the Greek word gehenna to mean hell, a place of eternal punishment for all unbelievers.
We need to understand the spiritual significance of the Greek word gehenna, and why Jesus Christ used it to refer to God’s refining, yet merciful fiery judgement for all unbelievers when they are cast into the Lake of Fire, on the Great White Throne Judgement Day.
As explained in Chapter 12, the Lake of Fire represents both God’s physical and spiritual cleansing of the earth and its heaven (earth’s atmosphere) in the Lake of Fire Judgement Age. This is all in preparation for the Eternal Kingdom of God of the New Heaven and the New Earth. The literal fire will cleanse the earth physically by melting the elements, and God’s Spiritual Fire will cleanse the earth spiritually by consuming the dross, scum and filth of wickedness and unbelief from the hearts of all resurrected unbelievers and all fallen angels. The physical Lake of Fire will be an age-lasting fire and it will not be quenched until every unbeliever and every fallen angel has been refined and purified, and reconciled to God by God’s Spiritual Fire, which is of course, eternal and unquenchable.
In Chapter 18, Jesus Christ did not Teach Hell, we give further details on the meaning of gehenna and explain how Jesus’ words have been mistranslated and misinterpreted in support of the doctrine of hell.
The most important point we need to emphasise is that hell is an absolute mistranslation of the original Hebrew word sheol, and the Greek words hades, tartarus and gehenna. There is not a single word in any of the original Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts of the Bible that means hell, a place of everlasting punishment for unbelievers.
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